A Knife Edge

FIVE

My body was still running on D.C. time, which explained why I didn't sleep much, and why at 0200 hours I felt like breaking for lunch. I watched a kung fu movie in my room and killed time till dawn reading over the briefing notes. Nothing stood out, and so my mind wandered to other more pressing topics such as replaying the last conversation I'd had with Anna. We were going nowhere, and so now we could go nowhere alone, without the inconvenience of having each other along for the ride.

I went to breakfast early. The buffet was deserted, a rare occurrence anywhere in Japan. I ate enough bacon to bring on colon cancer, plus two eggs, a couple of sausages, two hash browns, toast, and a whole cantaloupe. If I could go till dinner without having to face the local cuisine, the day's major mission was accomplished. I ate a cinnamon pastry as I rolled out into the foyer.

A police cruiser waited out beyond the end of a narrow strip of red carpet embossed with the Hilton's logo. Snow slush clumped across the vehicle's trunk, roof, and hood. The driver's window was opaque with water and mist. The window slid down and I got a wave. “Go ahead, make my day,” the now familiar cop said with a smile. I could have slugged the greeting out of the park, but I let it go. All I'd get back would be a blank look anyway, and what would be the fun in that?

The rear door sprang open. I tossed in my jacket and climbed after it. I'd need the jacket. It was still only just a couple of degrees above freezing. The cold immediately found its way through the scar tissue I'd accumulated in recent years from all the bullet and shrapnel wounds.

“Morning,” said Durban with the kind of singsong good cheer that makes me want to punch people, as she licked the froth off the underside of a lid of a cappuccino-to-go. “How'd you sleep?”

Alone. “Fine, thanks. You stay out late?”

“No. Bradley had to get home. One of his kids was having a birthday.” She shrugged as if to say, Shit happens. It did and, no thanks to her, a good chunk of it was happening to Chalmers's family. And sooner or later it would blow back on Michelle Durban. Her situation vaguely reminded me of my own marital gumbo. In the sober light of day, the CIA woman had lost a lot of her gloss, but I wasn't here to moralize, let alone judge, so I put her private life out of my mind.

We meandered through the brown slurpee that the streets of Tokyo had become, pushing through the combination of snow-melt and grit, the tires throwing up a bow wave of slush. And then we were on the freeway between Tokyo and Yokohama, an impressive multilane strip of concrete seemingly held aloft by the roofs of the development that filled the space between the two cities. Whoever coined the phrase “Nature abhors a vacuum” must have seen this place.

Our cop chauffeur settled down to a cruise below the speed limit, I assumed to avoid any ice patches. Our speed must have annoyed the surrounding traffic, none of which passed us or honked. All super polite. Durban and I sat in silence. I watched the urban sprawl roll by when the opacity of the window cleared enough to allow it, and listened to the incomprehensible chatter coming over the comms. It occurred to me that there weren't many countries left in the world untouched by the English language, but this was one of them. The only words I recognized here were familiar brand names paraded on endless billboards. Like Durban, these signs didn't seem to hold the same attraction when they weren't all lit up for the night.

The port of Yokohama appeared suddenly when the curtain of mist parted in front of a sky of beaten lead. The water beneath it had the color of wet coal. Durban passed a yellow Post-it note through the steel mesh to the cop and the two exchanged a bunch of staccato words that sounded like the linguistic equivalent of carpet burn. I assumed the Post-it held our intended destination, because the driver checked it several times before punching buttons on the vehicle's navigation system. We turned off the main road and into the docks, reduced to a crawl because of ice. A car had fishtailed off the road and had somehow come to rest with the front end hanging out over the water. It teetered back and forth, balancing unsteadily. Emergency vehicles clustered around it, their strobe lights bouncing off the surrounding concrete like little electric shocks. Uniformed people waved their arms around, small white clouds in front of their mouths. Our driver ignored the scene and drove slowly on. We eventually pulled onto a pier and slid sideways down a small incline, the wheels losing traction on the ice, before pulling up next to a ship. It moved ever so slightly beside the pier like it was alive, breathing, the movement only perceptible against the stillness of a vast gray warehouse on the far side of the bay.

I stepped out of the vehicle and felt my scrotum contract, testicles beating a strategic withdrawal into the warmth of my guts. I reached for my jacket. I was right about needing it. The uniform stayed with the vehicle, stamping his feet and clapping his hands, making little bows while Durban and I walked carefully across the ice to the gangway. The tips of my ears and nose already burned with cold, and my breath steamed. I pulled a pair of leather gloves from a side pocket and put them on.

Durban took the gangway first, steadying herself on the incline with a gloved hand on the railing. Two black shapes met her as she stepped on deck. Introductions were well under way when I caught up.

“Professor Sean Boyle,” said a man I knew from briefing notes to be fourteen years my senior. The cold burnished perfect pink circles on his shaved cheeks.

We shook gloves and I said, “Special Agent Vincent Cooper.”

A second man said, “Moritzio Abrutto, ship's master.” According to those briefing notes, he was American, as were most of the crew. The ship was leased to Moreton Genetics, the large U.S. firm which employed Professor Boyle and the late Doctor Tanaka. Abrutto was blond and fair-skinned. “Come inside,” he said, leading the way through a hatch, warm yellow light beckoning from within.

The air inside the ship smelled of diesel and bacon. We followed the ship's master and Professor Boyle into a reasonably large area with bench seats on either side of a couple of tables. The mess. Photos on the walls showed various people, mostly men and mostly bare-chested, proudly holding various objects for the camera that could have been anything from offal to placenta. Life recovered from the deepest oceans, I assumed. Nearly all the photos were signed. I recognized the subjects in one as being Boyle and Tanaka. Boyle was bearded, and they stood together on the ship's rear deck in tropical sunlight. Both men had their hands on their hips, ready for action. I bent toward the photo to take a closer look.

“A great man,” said Professor Boyle behind me. “I'm missing him already.” He peeled out of his jacket. “That photo was taken a year and a half ago, cruising up the southern tip of the island of Honshu. We were heading for the Trench.”

“The Japan Trench?” I asked.

“Yes,” said the professor. “Our first expedition to these waters.”

“The one just concluded was your second?”

“Third.”

Three times. I hadn't known that. Perhaps the fact that Boyle and Tanaka had been on the Natusima several times before wasn't significant, but it reminded me that while the brief I'd been given was pretty good, there were still holes in it.

“Can I offer you people anything to eat or drink?” Boyle inquired.

“Not for me,” I said, having eaten twice my body weight for breakfast.

“No thanks,” said Durban.

“Take your coats off and have a seat. Get comfortable,” said the master, taking his own advice. The rest of us followed his lead.

“So, Agent Cooper,” said Boyle as he slid in behind the table, “how can we help you with your investigation?”

“I'm not really investigating,” I replied. “I'm just prepping the DoD's files for closure.”

The professor locked his fingers in front of him. “Well, then, what would you like to know?”

“Before you start, if you have no objection…?” I placed a digital recorder on the table and switched it on. Its red LED winked, letting me know it was recording.

“No, that's fine,” said Boyle with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“I've already read your statement, Professor,” I said. “Is there anything you could add to it? Anything that has come to mind since you made it?”

The professor shook his head. “The truth is, Agent Cooper, I've tried my best to forget about the whole unpleasant episode. So, the answer to that is no, nothing.”

“If you don't mind, would you go through events on that night again, anyway?”

The professor glanced at his watch. “If you think it'll help.”

I nodded, fixing an expression of understanding on my face to put him at ease. Boyle didn't look much like a professor, but only because I believe all professors should look like Albert Einstein on a bad hair day. Boyle's, by the way, was thick and straight, and it was also unnaturally blue-black. Dyed. I guessed he was more self-conscious about gray hair than he was about appearing to wear a mixing bowl on his head. He had the appearance of a severe monk, the Spanish Inquisition kind, and I could easily imagine him lighting bonfires. But, as I said, first impressions can be misleading.

The written brief told me Professor Sean Boyle was forty-eight and that his parents had emigrated to the U.S. from Ireland when he was four. His face was intelligent and his dark eyes glittered with intensity beneath bushy black brows. His skin was pale all over, except for the glow on his cheeks induced by the cold. His lips were on the thin side, and there were vague acne scars on his neck. At a guess I'd have said he spent more time peering through microscopes than he did power-lifting and drinking protein shakes. He was also a valuable defense asset, according to Captain Schaeffer, and I had been ordered not to piss him off. I was to tread lightly, which I had every intention of doing.

Boyle glanced at his watch a second time. So, he had somewhere he'd rather be. Him and me both. “I'm sorry for asking you to be here today, Professor. I know you're anxious to get away and I won't keep you a moment longer than necessary.”

“That's okay,” he said. “I still had things to attend to on board. Dr. Tanaka and I collected a number of previously unrecorded specimens. I'm anxious to get them properly secured for the flight home.”

“Well, thank you anyway, sir,” I said, walking on tippy-toes as ordered.

The professor picked at a cigarette burn on the tabletop. “We'd been diving on the Trench for a week in the submersible.”

“Who's we?” I asked.

“The doctor and I, and a technician.”

“Is the technician still on board?”

“Yep,” said Abrutto. “We'll catch up with him when you're done here.”

“Okay,” I said. “Sorry to interrupt, Professor. You were saying?”

“We had perfect weather, tides, and currents, and because of all that had managed to complete the dive phase ahead of schedule, which was fortunate because we had weather coming down on us.”

The master agreed with a nod.

“We were having a bit of a celebration,” continued Boyle. “Hideo was drinking, and I'd never seen him do that before — drink.”

“What was he drinking?” I asked.

“Scotch. We only had that and sake on board.”

“Do you know how much he drank?”

“Enough, obviously, though I didn't realize it at the time. I topped his glass up maybe twice, I think. As you may or may not know, Agent Cooper, many Asian people don't have the gene that allows them to metabolize alcohol effectively.”

I nodded. Yeah, I was aware of the supposed Asian intolerance of booze. I wasn't aware it had become established fact. “So you had never seen Dr. Tanaka drunk before?”

“No, never.”

“Did you see him leave the party?”

“No. I wish I had. Then perhaps he'd still be alive.”

“Of course,” I said. I then asked Abrutto whether he'd seen Tanaka leave. No, he hadn't. “Do either of you have any theories as to what might have happened that night?”

“As I wasn't there at the time, I can only guess,” said Abrutto.

“Tanaka might have decided to get some air,” Boyle said, “or he could have gone out to be sick over the side of the boat. He might even have gone down the stern to check on the Shinkai—the submersible — and fallen in. Once in the water, without someone to pull him out, the cold would have killed him in minutes. He was drunk, so maybe less.”

I'd guessed the cold could have killed him, and I'd heard of cold having a bite to it, but nothing like what had latched hold of the doctor a couple of inches below his chin. “What can either of you tell me about the shark?”

The professor said, “Carcharodon carcharías—a great white shark. Top predator in this part of the world. They like the deep water and the cold — brings the seals, their favorite snacks. One decided to tail us as we cruised north to our dive zone. It was a magnificent animal. Very big, very powerful.”

And quite partial to Japanese, I thought.

“We see them every now and then. More often these days, since they've become a protected species,” said Abrutto.

“Did its presence concern you?” I asked.

“Only to the extent that it might damage some of the sensors on the sub, so no one did anything to encourage it to stay,” replied the professor.

I glanced at Durban. If nothing else, at least we'd cleared up the question of whether the shark was just a guy in a costume. Someone like Boyle was sure to have spotted the difference.

“Dr. Tanaka wasn't discovered missing for some time — twelve hours, according to statements,” I said. “Isn't that a long time to not notice somebody missing?”

Boyle shook his head again. “It might seem that way, but no, not really. The expedition was over. And everyone saw how drunk Tanaka was when he left. I guess everyone assumed, as I did, that he was in his room, sleeping it off. And, because we had no work to do, I was happy not to disturb him.”

I doodled on the notebook like I was making an entry, because in fact I'd just found a problem in the professor's statement. He'd contradicted himself about not seeing Tanaka leave the party. “How about you, Professor Boyle? Were you drunk too?”

“Yes. It was a celebration, and I was celebrating.”

“How about you, Mr. Abrutto?” I asked.

“As I said, I wasn't there. I was on the bridge, on duty, on my third mug of coffee, I think — nothing stronger.”

“And you heard and saw nothing unusual?”

“Afraid not. A storm was coming through and the weather updates were looking pretty ugly. As we weren't under way, I was concentrating on those.”

“Do you mind if I have a look at the doctor's stateroom?” I asked.

“Sure, no problem,” said Abrutto.

“Do you need me to come along too?” inquired the professor.

“No, I don't think so,” I said. “Not unless you want to.”

He didn't.

“I'm sorry I can't be of more assistance, Agent Cooper,” said Boyle, squeezing himself out from behind the table. “If you don't mind, I've still got a lot to do before I leave for the States this afternoon. If you need to ask me any more questions, here's my card.” He pulled out a slim silver holder, slipped out a card, and put it on the table.

“Thanks for your help, Professor,” I said. A logo for Moreton Genetics dominated the card, the M and the G twisted around each other in a double-helix pattern. I slipped the card into a back pocket and gave him one of mine. “In case anything comes to mind,” I added. He nodded, and fed my card to his wallet.

Boyle grabbed his jacket and left. I moved out from behind the bench and picked up my coat.

“You won't need that yet, Agent Cooper. It's even warmer where we're going. You can get it on the way back.” Abrutto stood and opened a hatch at the back of the mess, revealing a narrow hallway, and stepped through. Durban and I followed. The smell of diesel was stronger here. It was hard to breathe. A short walk down the hallway brought us to a door with police tape across it. Fingerprint dust powdered the door and a plastic bag was taped over the door handle. Tokyo P.D. had treated the room like a crime scene, not because a crime had necessarily been committed, but to preserve its integrity until someone like me absolved them of further responsibility.

I knew from the police report that only two sets of prints were found on the door handle: Tanaka's and those belonging to the man who checked his room, Master Abrutto. A deckhand had reported no sound from within when he had knocked, so he'd fetched his boss. I also noted in the report that nothing appeared to have been disturbed within the room. I peeled off the tape, opened the door, and took a look inside. The room was roughly the size of a large suitcase, but thoroughly unremarkable otherwise: steel walls, a porthole, a desk, and a few dirty clothes in a small pile on the neatly made bed. It was unslept in. On the desk sat Tanaka's computer, an Apple PowerBook, open, the screen-saver parading snapshots of deep space. I knew that one — I used it myself.

The computer had been untouched by anyone other than Tanaka, according to forensics. His were the only fingerprints found on the keyboard, and a report from the hard drive showed the last use had been before the doctor disappeared. In short, there was nothing in the least out of order here.

We toured the ship and I talked to several other crew members, including the technician who helped Tanaka maneuver the submersible. No one had anything to add. The general consensus was that there'd been a party, there was music, there were no women. So how much partying could anyone do? No one particularly remembered seeing Tanaka, drunk or otherwise. The doctor was, apparently, the type who kept to himself, not unfriendly but no party animal either.

Next, we did a turn around the stern deck. I couldn't see how Tanaka could possibly fall in unless he'd climbed up on the gunnel and lost his balance. I did note that, iced up, the decks were slippery as hell. I shuffled along, keeping my feet in contact with the ice, and came around behind a large red drum leaking rust. It was a spool of greased cable, part of the mechanism that launched the submersible sitting under the crane that dominated the ship's stern. I took a look over the ship's side. The black water was a long way down, flecked with light snow that melted moments after settling. Once over the side, getting back up on deck unaided would be tricky, if not impossible.

A cone of cigarette smoke suddenly appeared from behind the spool. Being an investigator, I investigated. I maneuvered carefully around the drum and found a large, bearded man in a red, oil-stained jacket, sucking hard on a cigarette. The man looked at me, swung his eyes back to the dock, and acknowledged my presence by taking another drag.

“You part of the crew?” I said.

“Who's asking?” he replied, blowing a mixture of condensation and tobacco smoke over the machinery.

“Santa Claus,” I responded.

“Don't think much of your sleigh,” he said with a nod to the police cruiser now blanketed in snow, parked on the wharf.

“So then you know who's asking,” I said. “Why don't you smoke inside? Gotta be more pleasant than standing out here in the cold.”

“‘Gainst the rules,” he said. “Damn peckerheads on this cruise won't allow it.” He coughed, a sound like a car changing gears without a clutch. Something came into his mouth, which he chewed once or twice. I was thinking lung. He spat overboard and a globule arced through the falling snow, plopped onto the water and spread. Something came up from beneath and pecked at it, just in case it was edible. It wasn't.

I noticed that tobacco butts collected over a considerable time had stained brown the ice and snow under his feet. “Anyone else on board smoke?”

“Nope.”

“I'm looking into the death of Dr. Tanaka for the U.S. government,” I said, officially clarifying my presence on board.

“Good for you,” he replied.

“Did you know the doctor?”

“Nope.”

“Were you at the party the night the doctor went missing?”

“Nope.”

“What were you doing at that time?”

“What I always do after dinner's done. I secured the kitchen.”

“So … you're the cook?”

“Yep.” The man drew on his cigarette so hard I thought he was going to turn the thing inside out. He took a pack of Chesterfields from his jacket pocket, shook one out, and lit it from the butt. Then he flicked the butt into the water and blew a vast cloud into the air.

“You got a name?” I asked.

“Cooke. That's with an e on the end.”

“Your name's Cooke and you're the cook?”

“That's right. Al Cooke. He got eat.”

“He got eat?”

“By the shark. It was waiting.”

“Did you see the doctor fall in?”

“Nope,” Cooke said, clapping his hands together. A wave of cooled tobacco smoke and old sweat rolled over me.

If he hadn't seen the doctor fall, then he wouldn't have seen him get mauled by the shark, either. I looked at the man. I was familiar with the type, the type that saw nothing and heard nothing, even if he did. “Thanks for your time,” I said. I handed him a card with my D.C. number on it, just as I had with every other crew member I'd talked to. “If anything occurs to you, give me a call.”

“Yeah,” he replied, stamping to warm his feet. I did the same and realized mine had gone numb. I could see Durban and Abrutto waiting for me over at the gangplank, breathing funnels of steam. I moved off to join them.

It was obvious that there was nothing else for me to do here. The defense of the U.S. had lost an important asset, eaten by a fish that could care less.

As Durban and I walked toward the police cruiser, I was thinking of Sean Boyle. The professor didn't seem terribly upset about losing a friend and colleague. I could see that the guy was utterly consumed by his work. Had it even dawned on him that Tanaka was gone forever? “What do you call an Irishman who bounces off walls?” I asked.

“Ric O'Shea,” Durban replied promptly. “Everyone knows that one.”

She was right — they do. I was off my game, distracted. Just around the corner was the plane trip home, and my stomach was already grappling with a cold, sour knot because of it.